?Traffic jam-busting £2.6m upgrade planned for road near Northampton General Hospital

?A Northamptonshire County Council project to improve a busy stretch of road in Northampton will be heard at a meeting of the authority’s cabinet next week.
The Cliftonville Road scheme has three separate partsThe Cliftonville Road scheme has three separate parts
The Cliftonville Road scheme has three separate parts

?The plan focuses on Cliftonville Road in the town, reducing traffic congestion on the inner ring road - particularly York Road and Cheyne Walk - and improving access to Northampton General Hospital, while also benefitting air quality.Chris Wragg, from the council's strategy team said in a report: "The corridor is a busy one, particularly as it provides one of the main accesses to Northampton General Hospital.

"Congestion is regularly experienced at peak times, and in the mornings traffic regularly queues back from the Cliftonville Road junction along Bedford Road as far as the A45 Barnes Meadow Interchange."

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The scheme is based on a slight widening of Cliftonville Road from Bedford Road to the south entrance of Northampton General Hospital to create three lanes of traffic - two northbound and one southbound.

The Cliftonville Road scheme has three separate partsThe Cliftonville Road scheme has three separate parts
The Cliftonville Road scheme has three separate parts

It comes after a small amount of additional highway land was secured as a planning condition from recent development at the former Cliftonville Middle School site.It will be accompanied by upgrading of the Cliftonville Road/Billing Road/Alfred Street and St Edmund Street/Wellingborough Road junctions.The county council has been successful in securing £1.814m of Government funding from the National Productivity Investment Fund in order to deliver the scheme, to be matched with £777k of local funding. Some of the latter is expected to come from the borough council and, in the event it does not, parts of the scheme could be rowed back on.

A council spokesman said: "The intention is to start the scheme in October this year, with completion expected in summer 2020."